


Not Your Daddy's Starfleet (The Through a Mirror Mix)

by cm (mumblemutter)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-13
Updated: 2010-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:39:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James T. Kirk has a plan. Kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Your Daddy's Starfleet (The Through a Mirror Mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noelia_g](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noelia_g/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Daddy's Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/73184) by [noelia_g](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noelia_g/pseuds/noelia_g). 



**Once --**

He's six years old, and Mom takes them over to Captain Pike's house for dinner. She makes him wear the suit he hates, kneels down and says, "Listen, honey. You need to be on your best behavior today, you understand? Please," even though she knows that he'd rather behave badly now and suffer the consequences later. He doesn't enjoy being grounded or having his toys taken away, but he'll take the hit if he has to.

"Why doesn't Sam have to go to," he says. "It's not fair, just because he has a class project."

Behind him, Sam sticks his tongue out and makes a throat slitting motion. Jim ignores him and turns his pout full on to Mom, who unfortunately doesn't notice that his brother is a jerk and only says firmly, "James Tiberius Kirk, if I hear one more word out of you -"

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Mom." He stomps away from her to wait outside, remembers at the door to turn around and stick his tongue back out at Sam, but unfortunately Sam's already run upstairs, and all Jim hears is the sound of the door slamming shut.

Captain Pike holds his hand out for Jim to shake. He's so tall, bending down slightly at the waist so Jim doesn't have to reach up so high. Jim ignores the hand and goes directly for his leg, clutches it and looks up with his eyes as wide as he can make them. "Are you my daddy," he asks solemnly, and Captain Pike blanches.

They don't go and visit Captain Pike these days, although years later he'd understand it was more the logistics of Mom and the Captain having separate careers that put them on different sides of the universe than anything he said or did. Mom looks sad rather than angry for the rest of the week though, and once he catches her crying over a holovid that she quickly closes when he comes into the room. Jim doesn't know how to say he's sorry, so the next morning he burns her breakfast instead, and she hugs him tight and tells him, "I'm so sorry, baby."

Soon after that she starts dating Frank, and one day she tells them, "Frank and I will be getting married soon, how about that, sweetie." Jim wants to say: I don't need a new Daddy, but he doesn't want her to cry, so instead he says nothing, just hugs her back and hopes that Sam does the talking for him.

Of course, Sam does no such thing, his reaction is a blank, tight nod of the head. Mom kisses him on the cheek and smooths his hair away from his forehead. Jim tries not to look as betrayed as he feels, but late night Sam comes into his room and sits by his bed and says, "It'll make her happy, okay? Sometimes you gotta compromise, that's all." Jim doesn't really know what compromise means, but he nods his head as if he understands, and eventually Sam tucks him in and leaves.

(Nowadays, sometimes, Jim can't remember what his brother looked like, just the way he used to ruffle Jim's hair when he passed by, or his voice, light with laughter when Jim did something to entertain. He knows that Sam always looked more like George than Jim does, although, like most things in the house pertaining to their Dad, it was never spoken about. Jim's not his mother, he doesn't believe in revisiting the past, and if one day he forgets Sam's face, so be it. It'll probably be better in the long run. Everyone needs to let go at some point.)

**Twice --**

In that bar, his face swollen and cut, and he can feel his teeth rattle loosely in his skull, pictures them falling out with the help of his fingers, one by one. He never likes being hit, or the sound of bone against bone. It's the aftermath, that's the part that's sweet. The taste of blood in his mouth and his body slipping quietly into a dull sort of shock. Calm down and breathe. Captain Pike says, "I know who you are. I knew who your father was." His smile is stern, accessing. "You could be more. You could be better than this."

"Are you going to adopt me like a pet now? Or a surrogate child? Should I call you daddy?"

"You should call me Captain Pike, and I am not interested in adopting you. Just maximizing your potential. Think about how you want to spend the rest of your life, son." Clearly Pike remembers him, but he doesn't think that Jim does.

(Sam wanted to join Starfleet, once upon a time. Before he ran away and got himself killed. Mom would have been so proud of Sam. Except now she's proud of him, warm greetings from half-way across the universe, her face beautiful and shining, and Jim always loved her the most. Never wants to let her down; which is why he fails, so often and so spectacularly. Low expectations are the key. He can do anything, now. The only way is up.)

**Thrice --**

The sun is shining, and in the kitchen Chris is nursing a glass of whiskey. Outside of his uniform he's just another middle-aged guy, save for the way he watches Jim as Jim drags another chair over, too close, settles down. "I'm not supposed to have more than a glass of this a day," he says ruefully. "You won't tell anyone, will you."

"I don't know," Jim replies. "Will you let me have some?"

Chris pushes the tumbler towards him instead of pouring him a new one, says, "I'm done," to Jim's raised brow.

The kitchen is the only part of the house that looks even remotely lived in. They have people come around, he's told, whenever someone's away from home often - they do some light cleaning, make sure the ghosts don't realize the house is empty and invade. Nothing worse than coming back after a long time to find that your house has been taken over by dust mites and ghosts. The dust goes away, the ghosts never do. Jim downs the drink in one swallow, remembers to grimace at the kick. He's not sure Pike buys it, but he doesn't say anything, not when Jim pours himself another glass, and not when he finishes half of that one and slides it back over. He just runs his finger around the rim of the glass, over and over, until Jim's sick of it. So he says, "So, you want to fuck?"

"Kid, you're young enough to be my son," Chris says, and he laughs.

"Sure. I can call you Daddy if you'd like. You can call me George."

Pike's laugh cuts off abruptly, the smile fading, turning dark. He doesn't pull away though, when Jim kisses him. Wet, and sloppy - A+ for effort at least. His hand on the back of Pike's neck, as if he's worried that Chris will pull away. He's not.

Jim knows. "Call me George," Jim says, against Pike's lips, but Pike ignores him. Instead he hauls him up by his shirt and slowly, deliberately, pushes him away. The rejection stings, and that's a surprise. The taste of Pike lingers on his mouth, almost unbearably hot. It was only a kiss.

"Get out," he says.

"Too soon? That's fine. I can wait." He grabs the bottle of whiskey from the counter. "Can I take this before I go?"

Pike waves his hand impatiently, "Just leave, okay. Don't come back."

"Aye aye, Captain."

(Jim actually does like Captain Pike quite a fair bit, although not for the reasons that everyone thinks he does. He's Pike's Golden Boy, and the first few months all the Senior Starfleet Personnel he meets carry that faint smug air of self-satisfaction around them like bad cologne. The one that says: aren't you glad that one of ours rescued you from the indignity of living the rest of your life as an Iowa farmboy with no future. George Kirk's boy, wasting his life away. Imagine that. Pike is the only one that doesn't look at him like he should be grateful to be here, and Jim wants to be thankful, really he does. And mostly he is.

"I wish you would let me help you," Pike says, once and only once.

His forehead pressed to Jim's, and all Jim wants is to push him down and ride him until he's sore, until all they are is molecules barely held together by sense memory, by force of will alone. "You could sleep with me, that would help."

"If you're trying to seduce me," Pike replies tiredly. "You're doing a terrible job of it."

"Who says I'm trying to seduce you? Maybe I'm just trying to wear you down. Or just give you want I know you want."

"You know nothing of what I want," Pike says, and he grips Jim by the shoulders, forcibly holds him away. "I'd give you a hug son, because you seem so desperately to need one, but I feel you might take it the wrong way."

On the way back to his room he stops by a bar and picks up the first middle-aged man he can find. He tells himself he's not projecting, or compensating for anything. He just wants what he wants, and he wants it now. "Can I call you Daddy," he asks the man.

"Sure, dude," he says, and laughs. "Face like yours, you can call me any old thing you want.")

**Four Times -- **

He's come back to Captain Pike's lonely house three more times. Pike is reluctant, but Jim is persistent, charming and Pike is just too polite to turn him away. Jim had faint illusions once, that it was his mother that Pike was in love with, but that faded away the moment Pike saw him in his cadet uniform, and all he said was, "You probably don't remember this, but when you were young -"

"I remember," Jim said shortly, and Pike flinched.

"You'll do well if you're anything at all like your father," he said finally, and walked away.

And now all they're doing is sitting in the backyard and talking about Jim's grades and his discipline record and how Pike will be deployed soon. "They keep calling it a vacation. Much needed. It feels like torture to me."

Jim leans over and whispers into his ear, "I guess we don't have much time then."

Pike moves away. He looks incredulous, almost amazed that Jim dares. But of course Jim dares. It's what he does. It probably says so in his psych eval, which Christopher Pike no doubt has a copy of. "I don't think -"

"Yeah, but I do."

"Did you really think it would be that easy?" Pike smiles, lazy and dangerous. "You're not who I thought you would be."

"I'm exactly who you thought I would be." He shifts, and puts his hand over Pike's heart, and this is a lonely house, filled with lost memories, and Jim knows all about loss, sees it etched in his mother's face still, sees it etched in his own. Jim knows all about weaknesses, and what a sharp intake of breath means. What it means when someone looks at you as if they'd seen a ghost, even though you looked nothing at all like who they were yearning for. "This could be," he says, "That easy."

Pike kisses him then, and it really is. Upstairs, on the bed, on his knees, he says, "Fuck me Daddy, please," and Pike shakes as if the entire world is going to collapse on him, but he doesn't stop, doesn't falter. Instead he presses his lips to the base of Jim's neck and mouths a name that's not Jim's, and he comes.

(The thing is, and this is the thing: he's not his father, but everyone wants to believe he could be, even though all his father had been was a whole lot of potential that a moment of bravery somehow validated. Jim's not stupid; perhaps if he dies in a blaze of glory he too might be revered in such a way. Pike says, because he's an astute son-of-a-bitch above all else, "You imagine things, Kirk. No-one looks at you and sees your father. They see the potential in you."

Jim laughs. "No one but you, right," he says. "Fuck you," he says.)

**A Fifth --**

It's the uniform that does it. Jim found it right before he left for the Academy, tucked away in a trunk in their attic. He never asked Mom if he could take it, put the soft blue material to his face to see if there was any hint of the man that used to wear it, but all he could smell was mothballs and rot.

"I figure if I'm going to spend my life in my dead, heroic father's shadow, I might as well dress the part. What do you think," he says.

Pike backhands him. It's the first and the last time, and he's immediately apologetic. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Kirk wipes the blood off the side of his lip and bares his teeth. "It's okay, you can hit me if you want. Tell me to take it off."

"Take it off," Pike says, but he doesn't wait. Instead he spins Jim around and pushes one arm up his back, forcing him to his knees. "Why do you do this. You could have everything."

Jim has to laugh. "You don't know anything about me at all, do you? People don't change. So, _Dad_. Are you going to spank me for being bad or what?"

Chris sighs against the nape of his neck, but it's borne of frustration, not of desire. Jim manages to twist around somehow, reaches up to him: hands, lips, teeth. Like this, he could be drowning, and Chris is the only one that can save him. Like this, he could be George. Chris breaks the kiss soon enough and pulls himself back up, says shakily, "Take off your clothes, Jim." Jim does as he's told, and when he's naked he feels infinitely fragile, and every gentle touch that Chris lays on his body flays and starts to bleed.

(The fact is:

1) Jim knows that there might have been easier ways of going about this. Not starting out by calling him "Daddy" might have been one. Not calling him on being in love with his dearly departed father might have been another. Respect, gratefulness: _Aw shucks sir, I'm ever so glad you rescued me, would you let me suck your cock now please?_ might have worked. He's lied before in order to get what he wants.

2) Christopher Pike deserves better than that. )

**Six --**

Chris says, "No, I mean it. It's over. I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore." In that tone of voice, and Jim is not used to hearing no. Or rather he's used to cheerfully ignoring it until he gets what he wants anyway, but he's smart enough to recognize that Chris actually means it. And that he's being kind because what he'd probably like to say is, "This is too fucked up, and you're too fucked up, and I can't deal with you anymore, not even for your father." Not even with how much I loved your father.

"Fine, whatever," Jim says, fists clenched, and Chris looks nothing more than apologetic, and Jim wants to hit him until he bleeds, or until he fights back. "You're an old man. I could do better."

"Do you hate me that much?"

Jim says nothing. They both know, this was never about Chris.

(He pictures their lives sometimes, if George hadn't died. In that imaginary timeline Sam doesn't die, they're friends and rivals and Jim follows in his footsteps at the Academy, proudly. In that timeline he falls in love with Chris slowly, and they go out on dates and his parents don't approve but they don't tacitly disapprove either, and no-one ever talks about George except in passing, because love fades when given a chance to run its course. Or in that timeline he doesn't do any of that, and that's okay too.

He swore once that he'd never join Starfleet. Never give a shit about the Federation, or what it stood for. He almost made it.)

**Aftermath:**

Chris looks pale, so fragile for a man that's always been a quiet force of nature. Bones says, "I'll leave you two alone for a while," because somehow Bones knows these things, even though he will never ever talk about it. "If everyone just minded their own damned business I'd be a much happier man."

Jim grabs a stool and sits down, says, "Hey old man, how are you doing?"

"Alive, barely. They say I won't walk again."

"That's not true, you migh-"

"Don't coddle me, Jim." The look he shoots Jim is sharp. "I'll be fine, you don't have to worry. Congratulations, Captain Kirk. You get to keep the ship," he says, his mouth curving up into a small smile. "Told you."

"Yeah, that you did," Jim says, and if Chris knows just how scared he is, how he never wanted this responsibility, even as he worked so hard towards it, he doesn't mention it. Instead he just closes his eyes, and Jim watches him fall into exhausted sleep.


End file.
